Pacific Comments on REDD
Special guest article from Fiu Mata’ese Elisara/Executive Director of OLSSI, Samoa
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Introduction
Some 15 participants from Tonga, PNG, Solomon, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Cooks, Samoa, NZ and Australia attended a Pacific workshop on REDD held in Nukualofa USP Centre, Tonga, from 29 to 31 July 2009. Representing indigenous peoples, civil society, and governments, they also discussed related issues such as climate change, forest protection, and role of indigenous peoples and local communities that severely impact our region on a daily basis.
Specific concerns of indigenous peoples raised in the meeting included their rights in line with United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), particularly their rights to free, prior and informed consent, sovereign right to self-determination and rights to lands, territories, environment and natural resources that needed to be upheld and respected.
Participants were deeply alarmed by the accelerating climate devastation brought about by unsustainable development, and experiencing profound and disproportionate adverse impacts on Pacific cultures, human and environmental health, human rights, well-being, traditional livelihoods, food systems and food sovereignty, local infrastructure, economic viability and their very survival as indigenous peoples.
The meeting called consumer nations to adequately address the issue of ecological debt to the global south and not shift liability for their own unsustainable production and consumption to those nations, like the counties in the Pacific, not responsible for the high level of climate emissions.
There was also concern about insufficient capacity building on forests and climate change discussions and negotiations in the communities, the lack of adequate resourcing, funding and representation of indigenous communities at international climate discussions and negotiations, and the failure of governments to adequately and accurately represent the views of indigenous and forest-dependent communities in the region.
The meeting wished to remind governments that Pacific peoples and especially indigenous peoples are on the front line of climate change, whether they are from ‘developed’ nations or not, and do not automatically have access to the benefits of a developed economy.
Call for Action
The meeting, by way of its Tonga Declaration, stated its concern that in its current form REDD is misleading and is a false solution to climate change. It erodes indigenous land rights and fails to account for the long term and ongoing conservation and land management of forested areas by Pacific countries, indigenous peoples, and forest dependent communities. Participants called for all nations in the Pacific to sign on to the UNDRIP and for any agreement on forests to fully and explicitly uphold the rights under UNDRIP, the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). All rights under UNDRIP must be included into the CBD and UNFCCC, and the customary and territorial land rights of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities must be recognised and enforced by any international agreement on forest policy.
The meeting called for the suspension of all REDD initiatives in indigenous lands and territories until such a time as Indigenous peoples’ rights are fully recognised and promoted, and community consent has been obtained. The linkage of REDD to markets risks allowing Annex-1 countries to avoid responsibility for reducing emissions in their own countries and could even increase net carbon emissions. Carbon offsetting and the inclusion of REDD credits in carbon markets will do nothing to address the underlying causes of climate change, nor will carbon offsetting and market mechanisms provide the predictable and reliable funding required for addressing deforestation.
Participants demanded that forests not be included in carbon trading schemes, and call on all governments to halt deforestation and keep fossil fuels in the ground; not trade one for the other. Forests need to be protected, but they must be protected by strengthening and enforcing forest legislation, not using market mechanisms.
The meeting supported the call for binding emissions reductions targets for Annex 1 countries of at least 45% below 1990 levels by 2020, and at least 95% by 2050 and other elements of the AOSIS positions. Annex 1 countries must therefore deliver on their commitments to making real and effective emission reductions.
Participants were alarmed that some international climate and forest agreements were not legally binding and that there was a disconnection between these international negotiations and inadequate national greenhouse targets and obligations.
It called for real and genuine solutions to climate change, not false solutions like ocean fertilisation, REDD, bio-fuels and monocultures for plantations that erode and violate the rights of Indigenous peoples and forest-dependant communities, and destroy biodiversity.
Participants objected to the current definition of forests under the CBD, UNFCCC and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and demanded that any definition of forests must strongly differentiate between plantations and natural forests to incorporate fundamental indigenous understandings of forests and account for the vast differences in carbon storage capacity.
Whilst the participants supported the positions of the Pacific Council of Churches (PCC) and Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) on adaptation responses and emission targets, they nevertheless recognised the non-negotiable positions of some small island nations and their sovereign rights to continue to exist as countries and to fight climate change to the end.
Participants were also gravely concerned about inaccurate carbon accounting, and the vast amounts of money allocated by donor nations for the protection of forests through flawed solutions to climate change, including REDD and called for accurate carbon accounting on forests, and for any funding for REDD, appropriate technology transfer must be prioritised for community based forest management schemes, managed through strengthened mechanisms within the UNFCCC that include impacted communities and in accordance with Indigenous rights under UNDRIP. Donor nations should not fund international financial institutions, like the World Bank to implement projects that support flawed solutions to climate change.
The workshop thanked the Kingdom of Tonga and the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Tonga for their hospitality, and expressed their gratitude to the Global Forest Coalition and the Government of the Netherlands for their coordination and funding of the workshop.
